<h4>Chapter 600: The Harvest and Psionicist Level</h4>


    Trantor: EndlessFantasy Trantion Editor: EndlessFantasy Trantion


    It was only after Olof departed the vige when his dark expression faded away, reced by a look of mockery.


    “Boss.”


    Olof’s subordinate who was driving suddenly looked into Olof’s eyes through the rearview mirror and enquired, “Are we just letting them off the hook like this? They walked away scot-free with a vial of Lpound, there must be consequences...”


    “What’s the harm?”


    Olof leaned into the faux leather seat they installed into the truck and produced a cigar from his front pocket. Another subordinate seated next to him diligently produced a lighter and lit the cigar for him.


    Olof took a heavy drag and spat clouds of heavy smoke then remarked with a brisk smile, “Thepany is setting the board for something big. As long as we do as we’re told and sell the Lpound, there’s nothing for us to worry about.”


    “I wonder what thepany is nning with this.”


    The driver expressed with vexation, “Why would they want us to funnel thousands of Lpounds like this to these specific parties? This is tens of billions of dors we’re talking about... Are they sure about this?”


    “It’s not for you or me to specte.”


    Olof said dryly, “We’re just the peons in the grand scheme of things so don’t ask unnecessary questions. The only thing you and I should focus on is that the Lpound gets delivered into the hands of the parties on this list without the Earth Federation finding out about it.”


    “Boss, think about this. What if we take out a few for ourselves, then...”


    The driver suddenly lowered his voice to a whisper, “There are so many Lpounds anyway, nobody will find out if one or two goes...”


    “Shut up!”


    Before he could finish his sentence, Olof glowed with anger and shot up from his seat with a piercing re in his eyes. “Don’t you dare say something like this ever again. You know how thepany operates. Even God cannot save you if you do something stupid like that!”


    “Boss...”


    The driver opened his mouth and seemed to have something more to say.


    “Shut up, that’s enough!”


    Olof turned dark. “Mark my words, don’t you ever dare conjure ideas like this ever again. I don’t care what the others are up to, but we’ll stay in line with whatever thepany orders of us, understood?”


    “Yes...”


    The driver wiped away the look of greed in his eyes and did not dare continue his foul suggestions any longer.


    Olof breathed a sigh of relief and stealthily utched the gun strapped to his holster. These rookie subordinates of his had only recently joined thepany and were oblivious of the terror of ckwatch.


    To be exact, a whole ny-nine percent of the poption only considered ckwatch as an exaggerated mega-corporation.


    It was only members of the inner circle that fullyprehended how terrifying thepany could be when it needed to be. It was an entity on apletely separate level, even surpassing the Earth Federation...


    Never had there been such apany with a grand monopoly on global resources in the entire known history of mankind. Nobody could say for sure just what the full extent of thepany’s power was...


    ...


    “Sir Godfather, I’ve received word from the Lpound department that all the Lpound vials have been delivered.”


    When Chen Chen stepped out of the Field training ground. He was immediately notified of this by Little X through the earpiece. “Of the one thousand Lpounds we’ve dispatched, eight hundred and thirty-five of them have been delivered to the designated recipients. Thirty-six dealers have aplished their task while thirteen dealers have taken an average of ten to thirty Lpound vials for themselves.


    “These Lpound vials have made their way into the ck market and have since gone to some problematic individuals... Humans are truly inherently greedy animals and despite us constantly advising against it, there are still many dealers who try to take advantage of us.


    “I suppose it’s true when they say that money makes the world go round.”


    Chen Chen reached for a towel to wipe off the blood from his nose and stated candidly, “Since they broke the rules, I’m sure they are ready to face the consequences. Go ahead and dispatch our B.S.S. troops to reim ourpany’s property and crush all these dissidents. Make an example out of them so that in the future, the others know better than to incur our wrath and steal from us.”


    “Understood.”


    Little X answered promptly.


    Just like that, the fate of dozens of dealers was decided in the span of a few minutes.


    Little X moved on to the next thing to report. “We’ve received news from the Earth Federation as well and they traced the whereabouts of the Lpound injected into the ck market. They do suspect that it was us who released these vials of Lpound but they don’t have concrete evidence. Besides, they won’t be able to figure out why we would do something seemingly so self-sabotaging like this.”


    Little X was right. From Earth Federation’s perspective, it would not make any sense for Chen Chen to release batches of Lpounds to external parties. After all, cklight Biotechnology had no political ambitions. There was no way the corporation could benefit from such an action and on the contrary. It would only further aggravate social unrest.


    Not only will such a puzzling move cause problems in the Earth Federation, but it would also directly disrupt cklight Biotechnology’s revenue stream.


    A usible exnation would be that injecting Lpounds into the ck market could inte its price greatly, but everyone knew that cklight Biotechnology was not concerned with mary benefits at this point.


    cklight Biotechnology had umted enough wealth to rival several nations and had multitudes of resources to acquire funds. They would not resort to such criminal and inefficient methods to further mount their profits.


    That was the one thing they hit the mark on, that Chen Chen would not do this for any mary gains. What they did not know was that he was doing this as a means to further develop his psionic growth...


    The truth was that Chen Chen was not going to stop anyone who got their hands on these Lpounds from obtaining psionic powers anyway. There were only a few ways things could go for these people.


    The first possibility was that they were going to be recruited into the psionicist army formed by the four major continents.


    The second option was to join the cklight Foundation and be one of the elite forces watching over the wellbeing of mankind.


    The third and final option was to be a psionicist not bound to any forces. It was certainly possible to lead an ordinary life if they maintained a low profile and kept their powers undercover. However, the slightest slip up would result in them getting hunted down by the Earth Federation.


    If the individual who obtained psionicist powers exploited it for crime, they just might draw the attention of the elite forces of the cklight Foundation and get assassinated!


    At the end of the day, Chen Chen’s best winning move was not to make one. His goal was to let these people do as they would and take their time to harness their psionic powers and get stronger until they died of natural causes and became ripe for Chen Chen to harvest.


    The only problem now was logistic concerns, considering there was a limit to how much Lpound could be produced and sold to the four major continents. There was a simr limit to how many psionicist Chen Chen could secretly create. At first, he produced as many as thirty-thousand vials of Lpound annually at the price of a hundred milliliters of his blood drawn every day. In time, he discovered that an extended period of drawing his blood resulted in a weakened psionic capacity that was notpletely negligible. Therefore, he had to slow down his pace and only drew blood once every other day.


    This essentially meant that the annual Lpound output was halved to only fifteen thousand vials.


    To prevent riling any unwanted spection from the Earth Federation, it was vital that Chen Chen continue supplying ten thousand Lpounds vials to the Earth Federation market every year. This was the perfect amount to supply to the four major continents. A higher output might decrease the value of the Lpound since the scarcity of a product directly corrted to its value.


    In the beginning, Chen Chen only sold the diluted versions of the Lpound. The difference between the diluted version and the non-diluted version of the Lpound was marked by a stark difference in sess rate. The diluted version of the product yielded only a sess rate of ten percent, apanied by a mortality rate as high as thirty percent. Meanwhile, the concentrated version of the product sported a fifty percent sess rate and only ten percent mortality rate.


    It became quickly evident that Chen Chen was too fixated on stretching the supply and demand chain. In time, the continents were no longer willing to shell out money for this product due to the poor sess rate of the product. Chen Chen had topromise and start selling the original, concentrated version by iming that cklight Biotechnology had achieved a recent technological breakthrough. With that, the market for the Lpound was revived.


    Then another problem arose, being that annual output of ten thousand Lpound vials would only produce roughly five thousand new psionicists. Another factor considered was that arge majority of these psionicists would be inducted into governmental factions. This meant that there were hardly any deaths urring at all due to the organized structure of governmental factions.


    To simte the growth of psionicist and raise what could be referred to as psionic turnover, Chen Chen used the surplus thousand Lpound vials on warring factions. He figured that the constant wars waged between warlords had a likelier chance of killing psionicist, which in turn would allow him to absorb their powers and be stronger.


    This was the reason that Chen Chen had injected the Lpound vials into mercenaries and misceneous underground dealers.


    On the same night, in the town of Kut.


    It was during the height of midnight. Apart from some guards assigned to the midnight patrol shift, most of the camp was fast asleep. Suddenly, a burst of bellowingughter ruptured from the third floor of a church located in the center of the city.


    Theughter grew louder until it alerted some of the scouts. They dashed into the open field with their weapons in tow and saw a giant with his body engulfed in mes floating in the air!


    “Hahaha...”


    The only thing filling the night sky was the haunting, madughter of the giant. The brilliant mes crawling across the giant’s body turned nighttime into daylight. The giant roared maddeningly, “It... It was a sess!”


    The vice general emerged from his tent and froze with awe when he saw the burning giant in the sky above as he eximed with ecstasy, “Congrattions, general! You became a full-fledged psionicist!”


    “Hahaha! Injecting three Lpound vials was well worth it. It d*mn near killed me but s, I obtained two superpowers!”


    The burning giant took a giant stride toward the vice general and quickly shrunk his body to regr human size. The radiant mes across his body slowly faded out as well. It was General Rocky!


    “They say that consecutive injections ofpound L raise the mortality rate exponentially. The first injection has a ten percent mortality rate which creeps up to thirty percent by the second injection, and up to a whopping fifty percent by the third! It’s simply too risky to inject three Lpound vials in one go.”


    The vice general was ovee with emotions. “But it seems that you’ve unlocked gigantification and the power to summon mes. It’s clear that God is favoring you and our army!”


    Another officer was just as emotional as he approached the general and dered, “Now that you’ve gained such tremendous powers, that b*stard Muhammad will have to surrender to you. His territory is yours now!”


    “Haha, I’ve had enough of that old, senile fool.”


    General Rocky bared a wolf-like smile. “Heed my orders, we’ll prepare our troops over the next three days, and on the fourth day, I’ll lead the army myself and we’ll crush Muhammad’s army until there’s nothing left of it!”


    “Yes, Sir!”


    The troop’s spirits reached an all-time high. They were ready for the battle toe.


    ...


    Simr events urred all across the Middle East Continent. In the short span of a month, many factions became popted with psionicists. The battle hunger in the continent had grown more fervent than ever due to this increased firepower on all sides.


    However, there was not much battle between the factions. Upon word of this news, the Earth Federation promptly dispatched its forces and marched into the continent to suppress these local factions. With the four major continents leading the charge, joint alliances were formed to curb the unrest in the continent.


    Battles between powerful psionicists inevitably broke out in this duration. By the end of it, even the Earth Federation’sbined alliance of the four major continents had suffered significant losses. Most of the rookie psionicists could not hold their own against the high-tech weapons supplied to the Middle East local factions. The majority of psionicists were instantly wiped out by these powerful pulse rifles as soon as the battle broke out. Only a tiny portion of rookie psionicists managed to scrape by.


    The war in the continentsted close to three months and by the end of it, the Earth Federation gained a new perspective on this emerging race of psionicists. Although the psionicists in the region were not superbly powerful, the vast array of oundish powers they disyed proved to be extremely troublesome during the war.


    Psionicists were a new breed of evolved sub-human beings. To curb the influence of psionicists on the general poption, the Earth Federation began enacting new sets ofws and regtions specifically targeted at psionicists.


    In the midst of this regtory process, the Earth Federation also introduced a structured system concerning psionicists. Psionicists were now divided into three psionicist sses with four categorized levels based on an individual’s psionic manifestation and potency.


    The established psionicist sses were the physical psionicist, the elemental psionicist, and the spiritual psionicist.


    Physical psionicists were ssified as psionicist with the ability to alter their bodies. This included steel body fortification, fire engulfment, spirit form, gigantification, and such. This ss of psionicists wasrgely known for possessing superhuman bodies that could withstand the blows of most modern weapons.


    The elemental ss was self-exnatory and referred to the ability to manipte natural elements. This could alsoe in forms such as telekinesis. A popr example of such a psionic ss was the ability to manipte metallic elements in the surrounding, just like the character Mao in X-men.


    The final ss, spiritual psionicist, was the most feared of the three established sses. This was the most unpredictable ss that manifested in many different forms. Some were able to control human minds and some could detonate a target’s brain from a great distance. Although this ss of psionicist was not known for having shy manifestations, their threat level was the highest precisely because of the concealed nature of their psionic manifestation. This was the psionic ss that the Earth Federation feared most.


    Meanwhile, the psionicists power level was graded into four separate levels.


    The weakest among them was the Delta level psionicists. Most of whom had just awakened their psionic potential would belong to this level. Over time, they should develop their psionic potential and advance to the next level.


    The level seeding Delta level was the Gamma level. Psonicists of this level had indubitably cemented themselves as beings surpassingmon humans. They were the outliers of society and could effortlessly reap the lives ofmon men around them.


    Further up the powerdder would be the Beta level psionicists. Only roughly ten percent of psionicist could ever ascend to this level. By this point, even a regr-sized army could not handle them. Only an established army with qualified psionicists could handle these psionicists.


    The most powerful of them all was the Alpha level. So far, there were only three people in Earth Federation’s record that had reached this level. One of them was the leader of New York’s Superpower Combative Police Force, John the Guardian while the other two were shrouded under the covers of the cklight Foundation. Their existence was aplete secret to the public.